j_b

how come we hear so much about the "librrrul media" if the media has such a liberal bias? those darn librrruls must be pretty stupid, heh?

the new york times and bulgegate: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2012

the tip of the iceberg: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2486 conservatives have framed the debate by casting the media as liberal. let's call it for what it is: the corporate media.

no shit! JayB is trying to rewrite history. according to him private financing would have enabled the building of railroads, highways, nuclear power, etc ... i.e. constructing a light bulb is cheap compared to electrification or dam building (without which the lightbulb has little use and the economies of scale necessary to make a killing are just not existent), the cost of car manufacturing is nothing compared to road building all over the nation (which is why cars were a marginal phenomemon before public funds paid for highways), and on and on ... as for the role of various lobbies to prevent public funding of alternative technologies from which they wouldn't profit, it is well documented (just google for 'highway lobby' w.r.t. to public transit for example).

why don't you tell those overweight 10 year olds who eat lunch out of a dispensing machine where the responsibility lies. gee whiz. don't tell me you just figured out that making money in the short term was the common element to both schemes. what a "conspiracy"! what a scoop!

cool link. a similar smaller tower (~200m tall) was operational during most of the 90's in spain: http://www.wcsscience.com/enviromission/page2.html of course JayB doesn't mention that nuclear became economically feasible only after decades of research and investment by nations. why should it be different for alternative technologies? moreover, burning oil isn't cheap if all costs (military, environment, health, etc ...) are figured in.

comparison of the UK, the church of laissez-faire in Europe, with Sweden, a classic so-called "welfare state". "Let’s compare the United Kingdom – a pioneer of neoliberalism – and Sweden: one of the last outposts of distributionism. And let’s make use of a set of statistics the Economist is unlikely to dispute: those contained within its own publication, the 2005 World in Figures.(6) The first surprise, for anyone who has swallowed the stories about our unrivalled economic dynamism, is that, in terms of gross domestic product, Sweden has done as well as we have. In 2002 its GDP per capita was $27,310, and the UK’s was $26,240. This is no blip. In only seven years between 1960 and 2001 did Sweden’s per capita GDP fall behind the United Kingdom’s.(7) More surprisingly still, Sweden has a current account surplus of $10bn and the UK a deficit of $26bn. Even by the neoliberals’ favourite measures, Sweden wins: it has a lower inflation rate than ours, higher “global competitiveness” and a higher ranking for “business creativity and research”. In terms of human welfare, there is no competition. According to the quality of life measure published by the Economist (the “human development index”) Sweden ranks third in the world, the UK 11th. Sweden has the world’s third highest life expectancy, the UK the 29th. In Sweden, there are 74 telephone lines and 62 computers per hundred people; in the UK just 59 and 41. The contrast between the averaged figures is stark enough, but it’s far greater for the people at the bottom of the social heap. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Economist does not publish this data, but the United Nations does. Its Human Development Report for 2004 shows that in Sweden 6.3% of the population lives below the absolute poverty line for developed nations ($11 a day).(8) In the United Kingdom the figure is 15.7%. Seven and a half per cent of Swedish adults are functionally illiterate – just over one third of the UK’s figure of 21.8%. In the United Kingdom, according to a separate study, you are over three times as likely to stay in the economic class into which you were born than you are in Sweden.(9) So much for the deregulated market creating opportunity. The reason for these differences is straightforward. Over most of the 20th century, Sweden has pursued, in the words of a recent pamphlet published by the Catalyst Forum, “policies designed to narrow the inequality of condition between social classes”.(10) These include what the Economist calls “punitive taxes” and “grandiose programmes of public spending”, which, remember, do “nothing but harm”. These policies in fact appear to have enhanced the country’s economic competitiveness, while ensuring that the poor obtain a higher proportion of total national income. In Sweden, according to the UN, the richest 10% earn 6.2 times as much money as the poorest 10%. In the UK the ratio is 13.8.(11)" http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/01/11/punitive-and-it-works/

well, PP is certainly delusional to think we can go back to the age of the robber barons without some major social upheaval (perhaps he doesn't care for he'd have cashed in by then). but it's a mistake to think what's going on was started by the bush administration; the thatcher and reagan administration (PP's true heroes) are the initial culprits. bush is only trying to finish the job as fast as possible before he gets canned.

you used GDP and unemployment figures to make your forecast. both have been addressed at length by multiple posters. You're getting screwed

only in your twisted logic would pointing out the creation of a huge permanent underclass in the countries that have adopted neo-liberalism since the 80's not be relevant to your measure of current and future "prosperity". it has now been quite a while since you have said anything of substance ... but at this point you are just trying to bow out 'gracefully', ain't it?

what's your point exactly?

PP provides a link to an opinion piece: PP bolsters his argument with "spot on" quotes... j_b provides links to studies substantiated by data and analysis: j_b "regurgitates facts from Google" ... can the rhetoric be any more transparent?

you are some piece of work. perhaps you ought to reread your first post to remember what your claims are. which "laws" of economics did you actually use in your argument? that creating an underclass is the surest way to create the illusion of "full employment"? that using mean national income as a measure of prosperity is the best way to mask the economic reality of a nation? that using GDP as a measure of prosperity without accounting for indebtment is the surest way to buffalo jump?

hide it somewhere safe between trailhead and basecamp?

more on the disingenuous use of "average income". specifically PP's comment about income in canada versus the US in his first post. from statistics canada: "Average real incomes are higher and have been growing considerably faster in the United States. At the same time, Canada has not seen the substantial increase in income inequality that has occurred in the United States. Inequality (the gap between rich and poor) and polarization (decline in the middle class) of family disposable incomes in Canada has remained roughly stable since the mid 1970s, while it has increased in the United States, more so since the mid 1980s. The income gap between Canadian and American families has widened at the top of the income spectrum. At the bottom of the income spectrum, Canadian families are better off in terms of purchasing power than are their American counterparts." http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/000728/d000728a.htm we could, of course, already see the above from the data in my previous post but i thought it'd be worthwhile to point it out nonetheless.

perhaps you'd like ro reread my first post in this thread and acknowledge my comment about your disingenuous use of average income as a measure of prosperity ... ok fine you didn't like my extreme example. so here is real comparative decile income data from the mid-90's (sorry folks he made me do it) canada US UK sweden germany 6003 3972 4731 4736 5225 9720 7725 7374 8518 8693 12074 10512 8976 9955 10419 14232 13201 10876 11014 11914 16417 16019 13000 11961 13398 18608 19144 15318 12993 14949 21231 22675 18002 14086 16689 24450 27047 21216 15548 19069 29065 33457 26065 17778 22394 44846 53610 43826 24665 34420 each row is the mean income after tax for 10-percentile income groupings. as we can see the "prosperous nations" have the lowest 10-percentiles earning the least among the nations compared, which is likely to be worse in reality since cost of living is also in some way related to mean national income. thus it appears that the UN numbers for % of population living below the poverty line are indeed meaningful. note: sweden is a classic welfare state.

right, now you are only 99.8% wrong. some ways to go.

just a simplistic and extreme example of how national averages mean different realities: country A: 10 people make 20k per year, one person makes 2millions per year. average: 200k country B: 2 @ 20k, 2 @ 40k, 2@ 60k, 2 @ 80k, 2 @ 100k, and 1 @ 200k. average: ~73k country A has ~3 times the average income of country B yet it is obvious which has most below the poverty line.

no, no PP. dru's remark attenuates the point i am making but i don't think it invalidates it. the key is "income per head below 50% of the national average ". national averages result from ranges of income that are very different from one country to another (like multiple orders of magnitude different). what you need to do is compare the real income (after benefits) of say, the bottom 2 quintiles. i don't know where one should want to be born. it's a function of one's location in the pecking order and of one's priorities as well (quality of life, etc ..)

good catch dru!

GDP is expenditures which here is afforded by borrowing. how long will it last? poverty is computed the same way for all nations by the UN: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4307745.stm#map see the bar graph at the bottom of the page. see the "welfare states" on the left of the plot, and the "prosperous" nations on the right? edit: the UN numbers are different than the 30% i mentioned in my previous post. the 30% figure comes from the british government as computed according to european norms.

in some twisted way, you are indeed right PP: a poorly informed consumer is nearly as scary as a poorly informed voter ...

well, the guardian isn't my gospel (for i have none) but as can be shown by your quoting it fairly often, it appears the rag has a greater plurality of opinions than the immense majority of our mainstream media. so perhaps if it was anyone's gospel it wouldn't be a bad thing. as for the economy, it doesn't appear to be well in europe but it's not like the picture is rosy here either. how does one measure prosperity? with blackbox-type numbers for unemployment or % of population living below the poverty line? ("prosperous" britain has nearly 30% of its children living in poverty, nearly twice the rate of many so-called welfare states). whose income is PP talking about? the average income or that of those making less than a $100,000 a year? the inconsistency between the pictures painted by unemployment and poverty numbers suggest a couple of possibilities: a) the published unemployment figures of so-called prosperous nations don't account for scores of people who are completely marginalized and fall through the cracks or/and b) unemployment is indeed low but many so-called employed people don't work many hours and for low wages without benefits. i hate to put it in these terms but for the sake of argument what would you choose if you had to (or could): a) being unemployed and your basic needs (food, lodging, heathcare, ...) more or less taken care of or b) working for miserly wages in subpar conditions, without benefits, and not being able to make ends meet?

awww ... do not be bitter rbw, it's not good for you.

"vom Saal was the first to reveal low-dose effects in mice exposed to BPA" http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002239760_plastic13.html